Bounty

by Kristen Ashley

  He watched my smile, his lips quirking before he turned back to his chicken.

  But from the bent of our conversation, I decided it was time. Time to share what needed to be shared. The perfect segue into Deke knowing who the woman was he gave the key to his trailer so she could set up a Crock-Pot.

  The woman he had to understand I was so he’d understand I was the woman for him because with each passing day it was becoming clear he was the man for me.

  That woman being the woman he already knew.

  The woman who was made for him.

  “When I was eighteen, Dad did a huge festival in the UK. I went with him.”

  Deke turned eyes from plate to me.

  “We stayed in Bristol,” I went on. “Pretty harbor city on the Bristol Channel.”

  “Yeah?” he asked when I quit talking.

  I nodded my head. “Yeah,” I told him and carried on, “There was a promoter in the city. He really wanted to work with Dad. He took us out to this restaurant on the harbor, cool place, lots of windows, great views.” I tilted my head playfully. “Though it was all boring to me seeing as, by then, eighteen-year-old girl who traveled everywhere with her rock star dad, I’d seen it all and knew everything. Very worldly.”

  “Bet you were,” he said, his eyes crinkling with his tease in a way I’d never seen but I liked very much.

  I drew in a deep breath to settle what that look and his tease did to the flutterings of my heart and kept talking.

  “Opened the menu, didn’t understand a thing on it.”

  His head cocked to the side. “Was the restaurant foreign?”

  I shook my head. “Nope. Just everything was gourmet. It was like I opened that menu and it was one of those talking cards saying ‘You are about to eat food that’s way too good for the likes of you, for the likes of anybody, it should only touch the lips of God.’”

  Deke gave me another smile with his eyes while he kept eating and I kept blabbing.

  “I was embarrassed, you know, being worldly and knowing everything, so I didn’t ask the waiter about anything because I didn’t want to expose the fact I actually didn’t know everything. Dad liked his food and didn’t give a shit what anyone thought of him, so he asked. That was the only way I knew what to order. I got something that was chicken. I figured no one could really fuck up chicken.”

  “Let me guess, they fucked up chicken,” Deke remarked.

  I nodded, having a feeling I was at least twinkling my eyes at him because I felt them smiling.

  “Yup. Totally. I took one bite of that stuff and my taste buds didn’t know what to do with it. It was an explosion of flavors, not a pleasant one, everything trying to beat out the other. The sauce. The spices. The textures. It was terrible. I didn’t finish it.”

  “Sounds shit,” Deke muttered.

  “It was,” I confirmed. “Dad got something else and he didn’t finish his either. Then after dinner we went back to the hotel and hung out, watching British TV. Rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle. Hard to beat.”

  That got me another grin but through it Deke just kept eating.

  I kept blathering.

  “There was a cooking show on, a famous chef, and at the end of his program, he had some celebrity in his restaurant kitchen for a cook off. The celebrity made something, a family recipe his mom made, and the chef made the same thing, except all chefy.”

  Deke shoveled more chicken in and did it watching me.

  I kept talking.

  “After they were done, they took the two dishes out to random people in the restaurant and made them taste test it. The celebrity made a chocolate pie. The chef made a chocolate hazelnut tart with some special crust and a dollop of some fancy cream. The random people tasted it. Everyone picked the chocolate pie. When they did, Dad said, ‘Like that fuckin’ restaurant. Stupid. Never overcomplicate somethin’ that’s good from the start.’ And I knew Dad felt like me. It wasn’t us that didn’t deserve that food because we weren’t connoisseurs. It was a menu that was a mess because it was created by a chef who’d convinced himself he was an artist above everybody, but actually, he had something to prove. All art should be accessible, even if the people consuming it don’t quite get it. At the very least, they should get something out of it. No one is ever above it. If you think that, you’re the one who doesn’t get it.”

  “Jussy,” Deke said softly, and I had a feeling he was getting me.

  “But for Dad and me, it wasn’t even about that.”

  Deke said nothing.

  “We Lonesomes like simple pleasures,” I whispered.

  At that, he sat back and dropped the plate to his lap, his expression changing from warm and interested to closed off.

  And it hit me what I’d said.

  “I’m not saying that you’re—” I started quickly.

  “I get you, Justice,” he interrupted me.

  I leaned toward him. “No, I think you—”

  “Babe, you think I didn’t get you that first time you stomped out while I was buildin’ your fire pit in those silly-ass boots to bring me coffee?”

  I leaned back, not certain what he was saying.

  Fortunately, it was Deke’s turn to talk.

  “There are folks who’d eat that chicken you ate, they wouldn’t like it, but they’d say it was phenomenal just so people wouldn’t think they didn’t get it. Then there are folks who’d convince themselves they like it just ’cause, if they admitted they didn’t, they think they’d be exposin’ the fact that their lips are not the lips of God who deserves that kind of shit and they’re sure their lips are the lips of God. And both those folks would look down on anybody who says they’d rather just have fried chicken because it is what it is. A whole lot better than some pretentious dish that tastes like shit.”

  “Right,” I said warily.

  “And you aren’t either of those folks,” he concluded.

  I nodded. “I’m not. My dad wasn’t. My mom isn’t. Lacey appreciates good champagne and knows the difference between well vodka and top shelf. She’d still leave that restaurant and go get some fish and chips.”

  “I hear you, gypsy,” Deke replied. “And what I hear from you sayin’ this to me is you’re worried we don’t fit.”

  “No,” I denied carefully. “I know we fit. What I’m worried about is that you don’t agree.”

  “You aren’t stupid,” he muttered and my stomach dropped.

  While I experienced that alarming sensation, he leaned toward me, grabbed the plate that I’d lost interest in and took it with his, dumping them in his sink. He then opened his narrow fridge and came back with two fresh beers. He twisted the caps off both, flicking them across the space. One hit the sink. One glanced off the side and came to land on the small counter.

  I watched all this with distraction, not liking where he’d left it, not sure what to say next.

  He handed me a beer before he put his to his lips and took a long pull.

  When he lowered it, he also lowered his eyes to mine.

  It was then I figured I’d instigated our talk and now it was time to get into it and get past it.

  He just didn’t say anything.

  So I did.

  “I am who I am, I do what I do and I can’t change that primarily because I don’t want to change that.”

  That time his head twitched as his brows shot together. “You think I want you to change that?”

  I was now seeing my mistake.

  I should have exercised patience and let him lead.

  It was time to backtrack at the same time tell him where I was at so he could (hopefully) springboard from there.

  “Actually, I think I just want you to talk about whatever it was you wanted to talk about so we can get it out of the way and go back to being Deke and Justice, the new Deke and Justice that I like better which includes orgasms, nighttime pizza and Butterfinger Cups added to our togetherness and banter. So I started this trying to explain that I am who I am, I do what I do but I’
m still just the woman you know. I’m not anything else and I want you to go in understanding that in an integral way so down the line it doesn’t come between us.”

  “It come between you with anyone else?” he asked.

  I felt my face get soft.

  “You’ve gotta know, honey, even before I got into the business, with the last name Lonesome, there were people who wanted to be around me not wanting to be around me, but wanting to be around that. That’s why Lace and Anca and I are so tight. We all got that. And we could always trust with each other there were no ulterior motives.”

  “And you trust I got no ulterior motives,” he stated, but in a way he wanted it confirmed.

  “Of course I do.”

  “Babe, want nothin’ to do with your money.”

  The way that was stated was not just a confirmation to my confirmation. It was almost harsh.

  And because it was, it seemed borderline insulting.

  “I know you don’t.”

  “Want nothin’ to do with your fame.”

  At that, my stomach clutched.

  Money was money, everyone needed it and only fools would say life didn’t get better in some ways the more you had of it.

  Fame was something else.

  Fame was something that, you got it, it was nearly impossible to shake. Degrees, maybe. But in some ways, it always followed you.

  It was also something you could never control. It was an entity on its own, untamable, able to give good at the same time cause disaster.

  You might not want any part of it, but once it was there, you didn’t have a choice, whether it was yours or it was someone’s you cared about.

  And I knew with nearly everybody in my family having some level of fame, and having lived most of my life not actually having my own, it was harder dealing with it when it wasn’t yours, but someone’s you cared about.

  “Those are both parts of me,” I said, my voice sounding constricted. “I can’t get rid of them, and like I said, I don’t really want to. They come with the territory of not only who I am but what I love to do.”

  “You’re not gettin’ me,” he declared.

  I didn’t want to be a bitch but he wasn’t giving me anything and I felt it down to my bones that this conversation meant everything.

  Absolutely everything.

  I sensed Deke Hightower was my place in the world.

  I’d sensed that all the way back in Wyoming.

  So this conversation might be the most important one I’d had to that point or ever would have in my life.

  Because of that, I laid it out.

  “Well then maybe you should say more than a few words at a time because I was a bit nervous about whatever this talk was, honey, but now you’re freaking me out.”

  We had been on opposite ends of the couch, but not far apart because the couch wasn’t big but Deke was.

  When I said those words, he reached out a hand, hooked it in the bend of my knee that was up on the couch and he used that to tug me closer so that knee was pressed against the side of his thigh.

  And he didn’t remove his hand.

  “I’m not givin’ you a lot of words, Jussy, because I don’t know how to say them,” he shared the instant he pulled me closer.

  “I guess the only thing to say to that is to tell you that I like you, Deke, a whole lot. You know that but maybe you don’t know how much. And how much I actually do like you, you should also know you can say anything to me.”

  He studied me a beat after I gave him those words before he opened his mouth to speak.

  “Right, then, gypsy, you gotta know, it is not the fact that I drove up to work at the house of a woman who was the finest I’d met and saw police cruisers that put us here right now. It was the fact I wanted you before that and wouldn’t let myself have you. And the reasons for that were not just because you’re the woman you are, you got what you got, though, straight up, babe, that was part of it. It’s because I’m the man I am and that’s not gonna change either, and in my head, you’re right. I was thinking we did not fit.”

  It was my turn not to have anything to say but it felt like something was crushing my heart.

  “Then I saw those cruisers,” he went on, “and I do not want your money. I also don’t want the hassle that’s sure to come from your fame. Not sayin’ that to be a dick, sayin’ it to be real but also sayin’ it because I don’t wanna have to watch you deal with the hassle that’s sure to come from that. But seeing those cruisers got my head outta my ass about wanting you.”

  “Deke, this isn’t really helping,” I shared, no longer slightly nervous, I was downright anxious because he said this wasn’t going to be bad.

  But outside the him wanting me part—which I already knew, I just didn’t know when that began—the rest just sounded bad.

  And he was being weird, blunt, distant, and it was scaring me.

  “My life, babe,” he shook his head, “until I was about twenty, it was not good.”

  “Okay,” I prompted carefully, not liking that.

  “And because a’ that, I got a way I gotta be and that’s a way that’s not gonna change.”

  “Okay,” I repeated equally carefully.

  “And Justice, bein’ with you, bein’ with any woman, but especially you, was likely gonna put the pressure on to change that.”

  “I don’t want to change you either, Deke.”

  “I got no roots. I’ve never had any roots. And I do not fuckin’ want any roots,” he declared.

  I just stared at him.

  “And I do not like rich people. I do not wanna go to fancy restaurants, unless their menu is predominantly steak, more steak and a choice of sauce you can put on a steak, not that I’d ruin a steak with sauce. And I can go there not havin’ to wear a suit, somethin’ I don’t own and never will.”

  “Right,” I said just because he stopped talking but also because I couldn’t say more since he declared he didn’t like rich people and I was a rich person.

  “No one has power over me,” he went on. “And no one ever will.”

  I had nothing to say to that because I had no idea why he said it because I’d given him no reason to think I wanted that from him.

  It was then he announced, “When I was fifteen, my mom and I were living on the streets.”

  At this news, my body turned to stone in order to conserve all its energy to battle desperate, miserable, soul-demolishing thoughts of the magnificence Deke and the mom he clearly loved a great deal, homeless, and I again just stared at him.

  “That was on me. I fucked us up. I did somethin’ seriously fuckin’ stupid that got her fired and blackballed so she couldn’t get another job. We didn’t have a lot because she got paid shit at the job she had. She got paid shit, she ate shit and her life was shit until it turned shittier when I pulled my shit and our lives that were actually just garbage turned to full-on shit.”

  I kept staring at him but I did it feeling the wet hit my eyes.

  “We got into a shelter, which was warmer than the streets, they had food so we weren’t hungry all the fuckin’ time, but the place still sucked. And she worked her ass off to get us out of there. She worked her ass off before we were in there and she kept doin’ it every day of her life until workin’ that hard killed her. Dead of a heart attack before she’d even reached sixty.”

  I could not believe this.

  Hell, I didn’t want to believe this.

  But he was giving it to me, what Lauren had warned me I’d have to brace for, and she’d been right.

  That said, it was no gift.

  It was heartbreaking.

  I felt a tear slide down my cheek.

  Deke didn’t quit talking.

  “That was her life. My life, I started workin’ at fifteen and I did everything I fuckin’ could to take care of my ma. But when I knew she was set, decent place to live, job that was steady, money in the bank for a rainy day, I had to go. I had to get out and go somewhere where I wasn’t cov
ered with the shit of life and I could breathe easy. Between then and now, been a lot of places and there’s only one place that happens. That’s the road, Jussy. Only place I breathe easy.”

  “I understand that,” I told him softly.

  He nodded his head, his eyes on my wet cheeks but he didn’t touch me outside the hand he still had tucked behind my knee.

  He kept distant and he kept speaking.

  “I know. You’re my gypsy princess and you’re a true rock ‘n’ roll gypsy. But what you understand, what made you a part of the road is not what made me.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” I said quickly.

  “Tears in your eyes, Jussy, I get that you get me.”

  “I hate that happened to you and your mom,” I whispered.

  “Tears in your eyes, I get that too,” he whispered back. “But it happened, baby, and that never changes. The road, it’s in my blood not like you, born to it like you were. It’s who I was driven to be. And it’s that in a way it’ll never stop.”

  “Deke, I don’t get—”

  “Come April, Jussy, snow starts thawing, weather turns, I’m gone and there ain’t nothin’ that can hold that back.”

  I slid away from him.

  I had this reaction even though I knew this. He’d mentioned it during our night by the fire pit, how he’d take off, how he didn’t stay put for long.

  I just didn’t know that it was something that might someday affect me.

  I barely got an inch before his hand curled tight behind my knee and he jerked me right back.

  “I go, Justice,” he started, his voice low like a warning, “this keeps like it is with us, I want you with me.”

  I go, Justice…I want you with me.

  More wet hit my eyes and didn’t linger.

  It slid right down my cheeks.

  Deke watched it then looked at me.

  “Think that’s an answer, baby, but you gotta give it to me with words.”

  “I’d go anywhere with you.”

  It was then I felt Deke go solid as a rock.

  “You make me happy,” I told him something he knew.

  But maybe he didn’t know.

  It was on the tip of my tongue to explain my poet’s soul, to share that “Chain Link” was for him, when his hand left my knee. He bent to put his beer on the floor then he twisted to me, his hand coming up. He caught me at the back of my neck and pulled me to him. His other hand lifted and cupped my cheek, thumb sliding through the wet as he stared into my eyes.